The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth 1922 - 1968

by William Feaver

***Shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction***

This book is the first volume in William Feaver’s biography of Lucian Freud and the book to read on one of the 20th century’s greatest painters. Feaver was a journalist and artist who became a friend of Freud’s and they’d speak on the phone most weeks. As they put together material for this book—a process that took many years—they agreed that it wouldn’t be published until after Freud died. The second volume of the biography, which covers the years till Freud’s death in 2011, has also been longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize.

Recommendations from our site

“It’s very nicely written, the level of detail is absolutely fantastic. In some ways it’s not ostentatious about the subject. It doesn’t make grand cases for Lucian Freud as an artist. It just says, ‘here is everything, the fabric of his existence, and therefore the fabric of lots of other existences around him,’ and delivers it in a very nicely organised way.” Read more...

The Best Nonfiction Books of 2019

Stig Abell, Journalist